Policemen Must Wear Visible Identification, Says Top Mozambican Jurist

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Policemen Must Wear Visible Identification, Says Top Mozambican Jurist

9:29 CAT | 22 Jan 2016

Domingo (File)

One of Mozambique’s top jurists, Abdul Carimo, who heads the government’s Legal Reform Technical Unit (UTREL), has rebuffed claims by the spokesperson for the general command of the police, Inacio Dina, that police officers are not obliged to wear identification.

Cited on Wednesday by the Maputo daily “Noticias”, Dina had claimed that the use of a name badge was not obligatory, and citizens cannot use the absence of identification as a reason for not obeying orders given by a police officer.

Dina claimed that the lack of a badge does not deprive a policeman of his authority as a representative of state power. For Dina, the identification badge was just “an accessory”, like a truncheon or a gun.

But Carimo, interviewed in Thursday’s issue of the paper, pointed out that all members of the police, when in uniform, are legally obliged to carry identification.

“If we are all committed to preventing and fighting against crime, we must all, without exception, and including the police authorities, be duly identified”, he said. “In the case of the Traffic Police, the law obliges them to be duly identified, and this identification must be visible on their uniform, bearing the name and number of the police agent”.

Carimo recalled that, when a new Highway Code was drawn up in 2011, it was harmonized with the codes across the rest of southern Africa, and this included insisting that the Traffic Police wear clear identification. He added that a police uniform alone is not sufficient identification.

“For a policeman to be legitimate, he must demonstrate that he really is an authority”, added Carimo, “and that is done by presenting his identification. We must distinguish between a member of the Mozambican police force, and somebody who is simply using a uniform for unclear purposes”.

Furthermore, citizens had every right to demand that any policeman who stops them in the street show his identification. “As a citizen, I have the right not to hand over any document to a traffic policeman unless he is identified”, said Carimo.

The same is true of other branches of the police. The most recent law governing the police, passed by the country’s parliament in 2013, states that all members of the police “shall wear their identification when they are in uniform”.

Thus only when they are in plain clothes are police officers exempt from wearing an identification badge.

Source: AIM